On Monday, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas admitted a
patient into strict isolation to be evaluated for potential Ebola
Virus Disease (EVD), based on the patient’s symptoms and recent
travel history, according to a
statement by the hospital.

By Tuesday afternoon, the CDC had received preliminary blood test
results back, confirming that the patient was indeed infected
with the potentially deadly virus.

The patient had recently traveled to Liberia, leaving the West
African country on September 19 and arriving in the US on the
following day. The patient had no Ebola symptoms when leaving
Liberia or entering the United States, CDC Director Dr. Tom
Frieden said during a press conference.

Around September 24, the patient began developing symptoms, which
are often non-specific, Frieden noted. On Sunday, the victim
sought care for those symptoms, and was admitted to the Texas
hospital and put in an isolation ward. The patient is currently
“critically ill,” according to the CDC director.

“It does not appear the individual was involved in the
response to Ebola, but we will investigate to learn more,”
Frieden said.

Ebola does not spread during the eight to 10-day average
incubation period, which can last as short as two days or as long
as 21 days. All air travelers leaving West Africa are screened
for fevers both before and after the flight.

“We [health professionals] all had been planning to look at
what our next steps are if there is a confirmed case,”
Dallas County Health and Human Services director Zachary Thompson
said to
KTVT Monday night. “Again, we have to do the public
health follow up to see what contacts, where this individual has
gone since they arrived here in Dallas. There are a number of
things that have to be looked at.”

Thompson reminded North Texans who may have come into contact
with the patient that the disease, while contagious, is spread
through direct contact with bodily fluids. “The key point is,
if there’s been no transmission, blood, secretion, any type of
bodily fluids by the infected person to someone else, then that
[infection] risk is low to none.”

On Tuesday, Thompson further sought to calm fears in Dallas.
"This is not Africa," Thompson told
WFAA. "We have a great infrastructure to deal with an
outbreak."

Officials are working to identify anyone who has come into
contact with the patient since he returned from Liberia, hoping
to monitor them for symptoms over the next 21 days to
see if they develop a fever. If they do, their contacts will also
be identified and monitored.

“The bottom line here is that I have no doubt that we will
control this importation, this case of Ebola so that it doesn’t
spread widely. It is possible a family member or friend could
develop the disease in next couple weeks,” Frieden said.
“This is core epidemiological work.”

The CDC is dispatching a team of epidemiologists and other
experts to Texas in response to the preliminary Ebola diagnosis.
There are currently over 130 agency experts in West Africa as
well.

According to statistics released by the CDC in conjunction with
the World Health Organization (WHO), the virus has infected 6,574
people in West Africa, 3,091 of whom have been killed.
On Friday,
theWHO warnedthat the figures“vastly underestimate the true scale
of the epidemic.”The deadly virus is ravaging parts
of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, with smaller outbreaks in
Nigeria and Senegal. The situation in Senegal, where the disease
arrived at the end of August, remains stabilized, the WHO
announced in mid-September.